34 posts tagged “nyc”

I was going to get an early night, but really couldn’t let the day pass without writing an editorial about 9-11. I remember going to bed in the small hours of September 12 (NZST) thinking that nothing was happening. Was I ever wrong. By 6 a.m., a friend had already called me to tell me what had happened in New York and the Pentagon.
   I put it up at Lucire, since most of (our) September 12, 2001 revolved around fashion, both at New York Fashion Week and the Wellington Fashion Festival. Your thoughts on the piece are welcome.

Here’s another one from the weirdo department!
   Let’s see: if this person had indeed worked for Lucire, or any magazine on the planet, then no wonder they have an axe to grind—note the spelling and grammar! (We had a dyslexic intern who wrote with greater accuracy than this, since she used this new invention called the spellcheck. It also helped she had better phrasing, but needed more time to get the words on the page.)
   It’s not terribly encouraging to know that the writer thinks ‘We had … went’ is correct English in the very first line.
   I have blanked out some of the statements that could reveal who on the team had referred this to me.
   And as with most people who are too cowardly or are untruthful, it’s unsigned, but the envelope is postmarked New York.

Strange American letter from New York 1

Strange American letter from New York 2

I didn’t see that one coming. And there are major spoilers in this blog post, more than usual. Try not to even scroll down if you don’t want to know because the caption in the photo below will give a lot away.
   Last night’s US Life on Mars was a huge departure from the original. This is the third-to-last American episode, so the makers might well be trying to tie up loose ends. Or, we might begin to see if there is a way Sam Tyler can change the past—in that Journeyman sort of a way.
   Scriptwriters for the 15th episode were Sonny Postiglione and Tracy McMillan; McMillan, of course, had scripted a few of the more imaginative episodes this season as well as one of the Journeymans.
   Before we get to the surprises, it was a neat in-joke to have Sam go undercover as an Irishman from Dublin which, of course, is where actor Jason O’Mara hails from. There was a comment about how authentic his Irish accent sounded. Though for a second I thought there was another Doppelgänger as with last week’s remake.
   New Jersey-born actor Peter Greene always plays a good villain, and this episode was no exception. (Folks might remember him from The Mask.)
   The first big departure was answering a question I had of the original: why did Sam Tyler so fear confronting his younger self? Here, he explains that he fears turning himself into someone darker. But, as the episode closed, Sam does indeed speak with his younger self in 1973 and there is an understanding that he has not affected himself negatively.
   The second huge departure happens in the final scene. Greene’s character, Jimmy McManus, shoots Ray and Chris, each with four rounds. It’s going to be remarkably hard for the two of them to survive this, unless the final two episodes get very supernatural or cosmic. And if they don’t, I guess there’ll be no American Ashes to Ashes.

The end of Chris and Ray

Great US Life on Mars: a remake of the eighth UK episode, so the basic storyline was the same—and because of the shorter running time, some bits were missed, and there was less depth to the Sam–Annie relationship caused in part by the still inexplicable introduction of Lee Tergesen’s character, Lee Crocker, into the US show. Gene played a bit part here, but he did in the original version of this episode as well.
   Vic Tyler (Dean Winters), is crueller in his American incarnation, and it’s interesting to note that Ruth Tyler (Jennifer Ferrin) is called Rose Tyler here—something I missed a few weeks ago. (For Life on Mars trivia buffs, Sam Tyler’s surname came about when the daughter of one of the writers suggested it, after watching Billie Piper’s Rose Tyler character in Doctor Who. It’s very interesting that the American writers chose Rose as Sam’s mother’s name.) And because of the shorter running time, there was one disappointment: both Sam and Annie had to verbalize things that we had to figure out for ourselves in the original (e.g. Sam realizing he had blocked the memory of Annie’s death at the hands of Vic). We also missed the part where Sam told Ruth, in the original, what to tell young Sam about his father.
   But what a cliffhanger! It reminds me of the call Sam received at the end of episode nine in the UK (second series, episode one) from Hyde 2612 and he seems genuinely fearful of the rings from the black rotary-dial phone. This time, Sam gets clues from the printing and form codes at the NYPD to take him to an address, 35 Stewart Drive. There, the phone rings as soon as Sam enters the house. And the call is of an electronically muffled voice, one that can hear Sam.
   Before you think that this is a straight adaptation of the British series and it’s DCI Frank Morgan calling, the call’s contents are chilling. The lights are flickering in the room as in Jekyll, and the script goes something like this:

Caller: Hello, Sam.
Sam: You can hear me.
Caller: Of course I can hear you. You’re doing a good job, Sam. I need you to do something for me.
Sam: Who is this?
Caller: I need you to go to the basement.
Sam: Why?
Caller: The basement, Sam. Across the room, behind you. I need you to go down to the basement, Sam.

And the credits begin.
   So: is this the American equivalent of Alex Drake’s Pierrot clown or the Test Card Girl? Because it doesn’t appear to be the American Frank Morgan calling. The preview suggests there is a nutter decapitating police officers, and the call could be from the killer. No Gene, Sam, Ray and Chris getting into the Cortina and saying, ‘Pub.’ ’Pub.’ ’Pub.’ … ‘Pub.’ Not a happy, upbeat ending—but it wouldn’t have worked here anyway.
   It appears this is where the Americans will break for now. The series stops here and does not return until January 28, 2009, after Lost, on ABC. It is a logical place to conclude things—this story was the season finalé in Britain—but by that week I imagine we will all be waiting for the next series of Ashes to Ashes more.
   Here is the January 28 preview and I don’t think there is a British equivalent this time. This, as far as I can tell, is where the two shows really begin to part company. And the Americans seem to be taking a darker route, which is what has also been promised for Ashes to Ashes in 2009.

Now the presidential election is over, I see David Letterman has no more reason to show his bias with wisecracks against women allied to conservative parties. And, in fact, this is a pretty high-profile guest. It’s pretty hard to beat the First Lady of France. And she gives some interesting insights about how she met the President and her life as Première Dame.

There was one good scene in US Life on Mars a couple of weeks ago when the American writing team was let loose on an original story (admittedly with some elements from a second-season UK episode). Just as Nicholas Lyndhurst went back to the 1940s in Goodnight Sweetheart and passed off Beatles’ and others’ tunes as his own, Jason O’Mara as Sam Tyler has a chance to rap some Vanilla Ice in 1973:

I don’t normally go for pop music, but Chris Cornell’s ‘Ground Zero’, used for promoting US Life on Mars and heard in the first episode, is quite enjoyable. It has a good beat, and there are scenes from the first few episodes.

My colleague Marie and I were chatting about travel and webcams, and wound up surfing to one for Times Square, New York City. This lady, chatting on her cellphone, waved at the camera twice—of course it was a coincidence, but it wasn’t half spooky.

Times Square webcam

Not a bad Life on Mars last night, a remake of the fourth episode in the UK. It wasn’t changed as greatly as the last two, sticking very closely to the original storyline so there were no surprises. (It would have been nice to have credited Ashley Pharoah for it since there were no substantial plot differences, though admittedly David Wilcox plugged what I saw were plot holes in the original, and resolved things better in the shorter time he had.) The Sam–Gene relationship was developed more, as with the original (the father-figure image that the last two stories cultivated wasn’t present), and we do hear ‘Gene Genie’. As with the original at this point, Sam’s and Annie’s relationship develops a little. Instead of ‘Det Insp Boland’, Sam’s alias is ‘Luke Skywalker’. Unsurprisingly, Gene’s ‘fruit-picking sodomite’ line was omitted after his attitude of the third US episode—Harvey Keitel’s Gene is less homophobic—and it is not established what the villain’s sexuality is, anyway. The hallucination scene, where Sam is the victim of a honeytrap, has Sam seeing not just Adrienne (the lovely Odette Yustman—formerly of October Road, which had the same producers, and from Cloverfield), the woman who slipped him a mickey, but Annie—which was a (pleasant) surprise. Finally, we see Annie out of the station in a dress—showing that Gretchen Mol remains very easy on the eyes, regardless of what she wears.
   But the greatest kudos is reserved for Jason O’Mara, who gives a strong performance as Sam Tyler. While John Simm will remain the archetype for those fans like me who saw the original, O’Mara made the role his own in last night’s episode. I was wrong when I said he was the weak link in the Kelley pilot: the man needs a good script and good direction.

Gretchen Mol as Annie Norris, off-duty in US Life on Mars

Odette Yustman as Adrienne in US Life on Mars

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Jason O’Mara, Gretchen Mol, US Life on Mars, series 1, episode 4

[Cross-posted] Just found out through Jeff Fisher: Lou Dorfsman, who can legitimately be called one of the heroes of American graphic design, passed away aged 90 on Wednesday.